


New Wine

by just_the_fics_maam



Series: Oakley and Lou (Unrelated, 2007) [1]
Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, Unrelated (2007)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-12 17:42:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16877349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_the_fics_maam/pseuds/just_the_fics_maam
Summary: Oakley, summer, a few years after the events of Unrelated.





	1. On The Coast

The train winds its way down the coast and as it turns a wide bend near midday Louise can see a break in the rugged hillsides. All of a sudden the view opens up and spread out before her is the wide blue-green of the Mediterranean.  
She is somewhere in the south of Italy but she doesn’t much care where. She only knows the name of the station where she will get off and be met by Petra and Giovanni. Petra is an old friend, a school friend, and Giovanni her husband. She is young to be married, but from the pictures Louise has seen, Petra looks happy. And Giovanni looks rich.

It was a bit of a last-minute decision to come here, now, although Louise had been itching to get away for the past three months. She just finished her qualifying exams, and was about to start the process of writing her thesis. She had the rest of the summer off, though, and after six solid years of college she was ready for a change. So when Petra called with her yearly invitation, this time instead of shrugging it off or citing the expense as an excuse, Louise just said yes, and booked her tickets. And now she is here, barely a week after the plan was first hatched.

Louise sees Petra right away when she gets off the train. Her glossy, dark brunette hair, large open smile, and flowing, colorful peasant skirt mark her right away as Louise’s old buddy. They hug, and Petra picks up one of Louise’s cases. “I hope you don’t mind, Lou” she says. “Gio couldn’t come. He’s working on the roof and he didn’t want to stop.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” says Louise. “I am sure we will all have plenty of time to catch up.”

Petra pats her arm, smiles warmly at her. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says.

A half hour later Louise is nodding off in the passenger seat of the little Fiat as Petra winds her way up into the hills, hugging the coastline as they drive.

“Wake up!” says Petra, poking her in the ribs. “The only way to deal with jet lag is to stay awake.”

“It isn’t jet lag,” says Louise, smiling sleepily. “I should be more awake than I am. I’m just worn out from all the work lately. I am so glad to have a break.”

“I think you’ll like our guests,” says Petra.

“Guests?” Louise’s heart sinks. She thought it would be a nice, quiet week with only Petra and Giovanni, and their two greyhounds loping elegantly around the gardens.

“It’s nothing big, Louise. I promise. Just Gio’s friends from the bank. They came up for the weekend, and they may stay on this coming week if he George can get the time off. They’re just fine. Nice people. She’s a little stodgy, but it’s nothing a little wine can’t fix.” She laughs. “And their nephew keeps to himself, according to Gio.”

“How old is he?”

“Oh, I dunno, I can’t remember. Eighteen? Nineteen? It’s been a while since we saw them. Brooding kind of boy. He and George get into a row every once in a while. Like boys do. But I think they’ll be on good behavior for us this weekend.”  
Petra slows the car and makes a sharp turn up a gravelly driveway into the hills. Louise can’t wait to get out of the bumpy car, and out of her traveling clothes, and into the Italian sun.


	2. Cliff

She makes her way down the path through the garden, and at the corner of the far wall she sees the gravel pathway split: one way goes back to the garden, and the other seems to lead down the hill, toward the water. She takes one more sip of her wine and balances the glass on the low stone wall, opens the gate, and makes her way carefully down the slope.

She hears birds now, and the trees close in behind her. She feels like she is lost, like no one knows where she is, and it is a good feeling. She walks, faster and faster, picking her way down the terraced hillside.

Finally the ground levels out and she sees a great bricked ocean walk, with a stone wall edging it. She walks to the wall, looks down, and is stunned by the view: at least fifty feet down, the water crashes into the cliff. It is desolate and beautiful.

“Oy!” a voice shouts. Louise looks around. “You there!”

“Yes?” she calls out, tentatively. She looks to the side, down, and up the hill.

“Down here!” calls the voice, and finally she sees a tiny golden mop of hair sticking out slightly from the cliff face. The figure waves its arms. “Can you throw me my shoes? They’re up there, by you!”

She looks and sees them, a flat pair of brown leather sandals. She picks them up, hesitates. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m afraid I might drop them in the ocean.”

“What?”

“I said, I’m afraid I might drop them in the ocean!”

His head disappears for a moment, and she shrugs, holds onto the shoes and makes her way down the cliff walk. She will meet him down below.

The descent is maddeningly slow, and awkward in her ballet flats. She grips a dwarf scrub pine to steady herself, and then she reaches level ground and sees him coming toward her.

She nearly drops his shoes into the sea then, and nearly falls down to the water herself. What looked like a boyish cherub from above now saunters closer to her, more like a Greek god than a sulky teenager.

“Thank you,” he says, his eyelids low. He looks angry, but it could just be the afternoon sun in his eyes. He takes the shoes from her, bends down at her feet and puts them on. He stands back up, still so close to her. She can feel a heat radiating from him.

It’s just the hot sun, she tells herself, but it is more than that.

“I’m Louise,” she says, holding out her hand. “Lou.”

“Lou,” he says. “I’m Oakley.”

“Like the sunglasses?”

He laughs. “Exactly like the sunglasses. And I wish I had some now. It’s so bright.” His voice, a lilting sort of playfulness to it. He is English, like Petra. He shields his eyes with his hand, looks out at the water. “You staying with Gio and Petra?”

“Yes, for the week,” she says.

“Cool, cool,” he says, pulling a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket. He sparks his lighter and inhales one large puff, then holds it out to her, his eyebrows raised in invitation. She smells the sharp, evergreen scent and realizes it is not tobacco.

She smiles. “It’s been years since I had this,” she laughs.

He holds it out to her again, gesturing. He lets out his breath, slowly. A cloud of sticky, grey smoke  pushes slowly out from his mouth. His lips are so finely made, she can’t help but notice. Their angles, sharp and precise, but with a heavy fullness to them.

She inhales slowly, the hot, acrid smoke burning her lungs. She holds it in, counts to five, and exhales. “Mmm,” she says. “That’s very good.”

“The best,” he says, smiling. He takes another puff and holds it out to her again.

“No, no, I’m done, thanks,” she says. “It doesn’t take much after five years.”

He smiles at her then, a smile that lingers. His eyes rest on her face, drift down to her mouth, her throat. He leans back against the wall. “Lou.”

“Hmm?”

“How old are you?”

“You should never ask a lady that,” she says.

“Are you a lady?” he cocks an eyebrow, teasingly. Her stomach jumps.

“Most of the time,” she says.

“Well, I’m twenty four,” he says. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Twenty seven,” she says.

“Not that different, then,” he says, stubbing out the joint in the stone wall. He blows on it, cooling it before he slips it back in his pocket. “You don’t look old at all.”

“Thanks,” she laughs. “Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says. “Come on.” He gestures with his head, walks away from her down the path.

She doesn’t know where they are going but she follows him, down a small set of steps and out onto a ledge where the water laps the edge. The platform is about ten feet above the water. She sits down with her back to the cliff, takes her shoes off and stretches her toes out, feels the sun warming her through. She feels a sort of sleepy happiness, maybe from the wine or the smoke, or maybe from the sleepy beauty of this afternoon.

Oakley stands for a moment, looking out at the sea. In one movement, to her surprise, he peels off his shirt, kicks off his shoes, and drops his shorts onto the paving stones beneath them. In a clean, athletic motion, he leaps from the wall into a perfect dive, slicing into the water, his naked body as precise and focused as a bird of prey swooping down to grab a fish.

He disappears for five full seconds , and then pops up near the wall, spitting a fountain of water through his teeth and shaking his head, running a hand over the wet curly hair. His shoulders glisten as he bobs up and down. He looks up at her. “Coming in?” he asks.

She regards the ten-foot drop and hesitates. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s been a long time since I did a dive.” She wishes now that she were more athletic, that she had spent more time in the last few years out in the sun rather than hunched over piles of books.

“You sure?” he asks. She swears there is a teasing smile on his lips, but she must be imagining it.

“Is there any other way in?” she asks. “Can I get down closer to the water somehow?”

He shakes his head, smiles devilishly at her. “You just have to jump,” he says. “Don’t think. Just do it.”

He splashes up at her but the water just hits the stone wall. Some of it splashes back to his face. He sputters. She laughs.

“You laugh now, but I’ll have you down here by the end of the week,” he says.

From her seat on the cliff she feels the magnetic pull of him and of the ocean, full and deep and drenched in dazzling sunlight.


	3. Dinner

That night in the house Giovanni and Petra proudly serve homemade pasta with pine nuts, basil, and anchovies. Petra holds up a large glass bottle of golden-green olive oil and pours it lightly over the bowl, adding crushed garlic. She tosses it and passes the steaming, fragrant bowls to everyone seated around the table: to Verena and George, Gio, Lou, and then to herself. Oakley is noticeably absent. Lou tries not to look like she cares.

She digs into the pasta. It is lovely and salty, tender.  A deep chianti rounds out the meal; Gio passes the bottle around and they fill their glasses until the bottle is empty, and then he gets another.

Oakley appears in the doorway a moment later, breathing hard. Lou chokes back a smile as she sees that he is wearing nothing but a towel, his hair and bare legs still dripping.

“Oakley!” thunders George, standing up. “Go and get some clothes on. Be decent. We may be in Italy but we’re still in civilization for God’s sake!”

Verena puts her hand on George’s arm. “Darling,” she says, a look of deep weariness on her face.

“You know, I have to walk through here to get back up to my room from the shower. I’m so bloody sorry!” Oakley yells back, the veins in his neck and forehead standing out.

“Don’t you talk to me that way, my boy, and next time, you bring your clothes with you! Strutting through here half naked.” George mumbles something else and sits down in a huff.

Lou pauses, her fork twirling in the pasta bowl, and she watches him cross the room, his face burning red with anger. Just as he passes her, he catches her eye, and the slightest smirk, the edge of a wink, crosses his face. She feels her stomach jump again and she looks down at her food, trying not to gasp for breath too loudly. She watches the stairs as his legs run up and disappear.

They are eating tiny plates of chocolate torte by the time he comes down, dressed and smelling like clean clothes and fragrant pine, his hair still damp. He sits down next to Lou on the wide wooden bench of the table, and she moves to the side to give him more room.  
“It’s all right,” he says in low tones, his thigh pressing into hers. He serves himself a bowl of pasta.

Although Oakley is only a few years younger than she, Lou is surprised to find that the two couples speak to him as if he is a teenager still. They ask him about school, give him endless and unsolicited advice, and nag him mercilessly, to the point that Lou wants to speak up. She feels like doing so would only make it more awkward, though, so she keeps her peace.

At one point, George starts haranguing him about why he wouldn’t enter law school when he had the chance, and Lou reaches below the table, absently pats Oakley’s knee. He presses his hand flat on the back of hers, and then takes her hand in his, trailing it higher until her fingers are grazing the skin of his upper thigh, inside his shorts. He shifts in his seat, clears his throat. She works her fingers higher, slowly, and sees a bright red flush creep up in his cheeks. He takes a deep and desperate breath, argues back at George, his answer curt and rushed.

She reaches farther up and feels the edge of something soft and hot, which jumps and stiffens slightly at her touch. Oakley’s hips twitch forward toward her hand, and she hears his breath: heavy.

She draws her hand back and reaches for the wine bottle, filling her glass and his. She feels him watching her. Her face is hot, but no one else at the table seems to notice. His hand on her thigh, then, teasing, dancing fingers sliding up the soft skin on the inside of her leg, drawing warm circles slowly up under her skirt. After an eternity he reaches the place where her thighs meet, slips a finger inside her panties, and rubs her tender spot, pressing it quickly, then bearing down harder.

She has a hard time keeping herself under control as the conversation about suitable professions drones on at the table. As his finger quickens, rubbing her higher and higher, she resists crying out. Her legs stiffen as she presses incrementally against him. She holds her breath, willing her eyes not to roll up to the ceiling in the tide of desire. At the moment of climax she grips her fingernails into his leg and he presses, bearing down hard with a curved finger. She feigns a coughing fit as the rush of orgasm hits her, washes through her body. She jumps up, excuses herself while fake-coughing into her cloth napkin, fairly runs to the powder room on the other side of the family’s sitting room. Inside, she leans against the sink, her heart pounding.

After an interval she straightens, dashes some water on her face, and walks out to face everyone again. When she reaches the kitchen, though, it is deserted except for Verena clearing and rinsing a few plates. There is not even enough left for Lou to help with. She looks around for Oakley – for everyone – but they seem to have disappeared.

She looks out the back door and down the garden path she walked this morning. Maybe they walked out that way. She walks outside, looking up at the stars in the silver-grey sky. The moon is full and bright as a neon dinner plate. She can see her shadow as she walks around the garden, breathing deeply the rich scent of the green pines that ring the yard.


	4. At the Beach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day together

The next day is strangely grey and heavy, but Lou and the other guests pile into the Fiat and George’s rented BMW and take a short drip to a rough, pebbly beach. The sand there is large, in huge crystals that scrub their feet as they walk close to the water.

The sea itself is a kind of slate grey today, opaque and depthless, like a smear of paint on a canvas. Lou rests back in her beach chair, dusting the sand off her feet and looking up at the sky. One lone seagull swoops overhead.

Oakley is silent this morning, staring out at the water and chain smoking.

“You all right?” Lou asks.

“Fine,” he says, lighting another.

She takes a deep breath, strangely enjoying the dusty tobacco smell. She thinks of asking where everyone went last night, or dropping her voice low to say something soft and sexy, but every time she opens her mouth, her voice stops and she just looks back to the water. It seems to be a day for silence.

After a while, Petra and Gio want to take a stroll down the beach, so they stand and kick off their sandals and walk down the edge of the sand and water. Lou walks where the ocean laps the brown sand so the powder doesn’t work its way between her toes. George and Verena walk ahead of her, marching rather than strolling, it seems.

“Why do you travel with them?” Lou asks Oakley.

“Better than staying home with my mum and dad all the time,” he says. “University is out for the summer and there’s nothing to do at home. Uncle George is a cock, but he has good friends.” He smiles.

“There’s a smile,” says Lou.

He looks serious again, puts his hands in his pockets, and looks ahead. The salty breeze ruffles his hair for a moment, making two curls stand up on end. They walk in silence for a moment.

“Lou, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do I seem smart to you?”

She laughs for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“Like, do I seem like I could… I mean, when you talk to me, do I seem like the kind of person who could really be something?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Yes. You are very well spoken. When you speak.” She smiles at him.

He smiles but it turns into a grimace. He stops walking, kicking at a pebble with his toe. “I mean it, Lou.”

“So do I,” she says. “I don’t really know you, but you seem smart to me. Why do you ask?”

He looks up, waits until George and Verena and Petra and Gio move far ahead. “When I go back home, I’m not going home,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m supposed to be studying to go into Law,” he says. “My father did it, and his father. It’s not what I want, though.”

“What do you want?”

He looks at her, his agate-blue eyes stunning, liquid. “I want to be a doctor,” he says. Then he shakes his head. “It’s ridiculous, though. It’s so hard to be a doctor.”

“It’s an important job, though.”

“Uncle George doesn’t think I can do it at all,” he says. “Maybe he’s right.”

“He isn’t,” she says. “Whatever he is, he’s not right about that.”

“So I’m going to a pre-medicine program,” he says, pulling another cigarette from his pocket.

“You know that’s bad for you, right?” she asks.

“Ha, ha. Yes, I know that.” He lights it and takes a deep drag. “I just have to go. They won’t understand why I don’t want Law.”

“But it’s your life, right?”

He laughs bitterly. “You don’t know my family,” he says.

“Well, I think it sounds like a great idea. They’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe.”

“It seems strange that somebody could not want to have a doctor in the family.”

He laughs. “Thanks, Lou.”

“No problem,” she says.

He takes a deep breath. “I feel a bit better,” he says.

“So do I,” she says. She draws next to him, walking in the shining, wet sand. She hooks her pinky finger in his and they swing their arms back and forth, watching the tiny figures of the two couples ahead of them walk down the beach.

–

Right after lunch it starts raining. Petra cries out, and the ladies scramble to gather up the towels and chairs and run to the car. The men walk slowly, lumberingly toward the car. “Come  _on_!” shrieks Petra, laughing, as she starts up the Fiat. Lou jumps into the backseat, and Oakley slides in beside her. Petra calls out to Verena: “Come with us, Rena?”

Verena shakes her head no, opens the door to the BMW and climbs in.

“Just as well,” says Petra, smiling and shoving the Fiat into gear.

The rain is surprisingly hard and the driving is slow, creeping around the curves and bends slowly, watching for oncoming traffic on the narrow old roads.

Oakley slides his arm along the top of the bench seat, his hand draped down Lou’s arm. He pulls her closer, and she feels a whole-body thrill as he presses her into him, his young, muscled chest, his long leg, barely fitting into the space behind the front seat.

Her heart is pounding, and her breath comes fast. The grey raindrops hit the window like fat bugs, exploding and running down the glass. The inside of the windows begins to steam, and Petra laughs as she wipes the windshield over and over with a handkerchief. “I can barely see!” she whines. “How are you both doing back there? Still awake?”

“Fine,” says Oakley, brushing Lou’s cheek with his hand, turning her to face him.

“You two are making me wish the old rear-view mirror hadn’t fallen off!” she jokes. “Keep your hands to yourselves!”

Oakley forces a dry laugh. Lou is silent. Petra is joking, but Lou is so deep under Oakley’s spell she can barely process the words her friend is saying.

The road steepens, and all of Petra’s focus turns to the road ahead. She grips the wheel tightly with two hands, pitches forward to watch the lines of the curving street.

Oakley leans forward, closing the space between them. He puts his hand behind Lou’s neck, and takes her lips, a kiss. Gentle. Excruciating. Silent. He pulls away, looks in her eyes, then closes his again, the lush eyelashes resting on his cheek. His top lip barely touches hers, damp, the slight touch making Lou shiver. The car turns and she pitches against his chest, presses in for a  deeper kiss. He teases her lips with his tongue, and she tastes the beautiful angles of his mouth, full and swollen. A hint of tobacco. A warm sweetness.

He laces his fingers into her hair, pulls her head closer to his, drops quiet, soft kisses on her cheek and down her neck.

The car pitches in the other direction and Lou recognizes the familiar tilt of the steep driveway. She leans away from Oakley slightly, not quite ready to be discovered by Petra. He looks at her, his eyes heavy.

“Tonight.” Lou mouths the word to him and with one rush of will, pushes back from him and takes his hands off her shoulder. Her eyes meet his and he nods. She sees in his ocean-eyes the promise of something deep and dark, something rumbling.

With a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder, she kicks open the door and  runs toward the house, the raindrops soaking through her dress, chilling her skin.


	5. Chianti

Inside the house they discover that in the storm, the roof has leaked again in spite of Gio’s improvements. The rain pours down from the ceiling, trickling through the old clay roof tiles and plaster and onto the kitchen floor, dripping into an enormous puddle.

“Dammit,” says Petra. “Gio, we have to go fix that again.”

“I know, my dear, I know,” he says, holding her arms and kissing her on the cheek. “This is how it is in these old villas. We live with their quirks, and they live with ours.” Petra squeezes his arm.

“Now, just to clean up!” says Gio. “A few towels, and the washtub.”

Lou walks to the linen closet and fills her arms with everything soft and fluffy, brings the towels down and starts sopping up the water, wringing the towels out into the zinc tub that George and Gio drag in from the garden. The rain plinks down against the grey metal.

Petra opens a bottle of wine and they all drink, laughing, sweating from the sudden burst of work. “Well,” she says, “I suppose there’s nothing else to really be done now, so we might as well start on supper.”

“I’ll help,” says Verena, and Lou takes her place at the counter, too, dicing and peeling potatoes, skinning the peels off of carrots with long strokes. It all goes into the dutch oven with a rosy pink pork roast, tied tight with twine.

The ladies chat and laugh, make plans to go into town to shop the next day. Verena isn’t so bad on her own, thinks Lou. It’s just when she’s with George that she gets so tense and terrible.

Petra turns to Lou. “Would you be a dear and go out and find me another bottle of Chianti?” she asks. “It sounds strange, but I love to pour a little in with the roast while it bakes. It’s surprisingly good, with the rosemary.”

“Sure, absolutely,” says Lou, sliding her sandals on.

The rain is light now, and she runs quickly to the wine cellar, dug into the side of a hill adjacent to the house. She walks down the stone steps there, pushes the door open.

She sees Oakley, sitting on a cask, holding a tiny glass of wine, staring at a bottle with his eyebrows knitted together. She laughs.

“Aren’t you a little old to be sneaking drinks?” she asks.

He looks up and smiles. He looks back down at the bottle. “I think I’ve gotten the wrong one,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I was supposed to find a bottle of Gio’s table wine for tonight, and taste it to make sure it’s not gone off. But this one is too early, I think. It’s new wine. Too young,” he says, looking up at her.

“How can you tell?” she asks.

“It’s… it needs to soften a little. It’s too sharp still,” he says.

“Hmm,” she says. “I’m not sure. I don’t know very much about wine.  I just know that I like it.”

He holds her gaze for a longer moment than she expects. Not smiling.

“I’m afraid it’s useless now,” he says. “I’ve opened it too early, and it can’t be recorked.”

“Not entirely useless,” she says, moving close to him.

“No?” his voice is soft.

“No,” she says, shaking her head, smiling lightly.

He dips a fingertip in the tiny juice glass of wine, holds it up to her. She closes her eyes, licks the garnet drop of wine. The sharp tannins make her cough. He laughs.

“It’s not all bad, though,” she says. “It has a kick, but I almost like it.”

“Me too,” he says, smiling slowly.

He dips his finger in the glass again, trails the bitter wine across her lower lip, leans in and kisses her, taking her lip between his, gently drinking the tangy flavor. She puts her hands up into his hair, pulling slightly, bringing him closer to her. He turns, slowly, pressing her back into the wooden rack.

He runs his hands down her bare arms, and she shivers.

“Are you cold?” he says softly, in her ear.

“No” is all she can say, the only sound she can make. He presses his lips so lightly into her neck, slides them down, barely touching the skin of her throat, her collarbone. His breath is hot on her damp skin.

She is down on the stone pavers then, their cold silence beneath her. She pulls him down with her. He leans over her, pushes her dress off her shoulder. A smug, impish smile on his lips, he raises his eyebrows, takes what is left of the glass of wine and pours it onto her skin. It runs from the hollow of her throat, trickling maddeningly down between her breasts. He meets her eyes and leans down, not breaking his gaze, tasting the wine with a teasing tongue, sliding up from her chest to where the wine pools at her throat.

She feels a sleepy pleasure warming through her. She lets out a sigh, opens her knee, and he slides closer. She feels the full weight of him then, and he holds her thigh with a firm grip. He pushes her skirt up quickly, forcefully, softly sighing when he feels that she has nothing on underneath. His hand grips the flesh of her thigh; he slides his thumb along her hipbone and lets out a light moan.

Lou reaches desperately around and pulls madly at his shorts and they slide down his thighs. He kicks them and his shoes off. He smiles again, sliding his hands up her tender inner arms, pinning her wrists to the floor above her head. His grip is tight, almost painful, and Lou’s pulse quickens and she cries out, pushing her hips up to meet his. His face changes for just a moment, his eyebrows raised. He looks at her sharply.

“Lou, is this what you want?”

She nods, silently. Her lips parted.

“Tell me now,” he says, into her ear.

“Take want you want,” she says boldly, impatiently, hooking her leg around him and drawing him closer to her.

He grins and teases, barely pushing into her and back out again. She arches her back, straining against his hands, where they hold her wrists still to the cold stones of the floor. “More,” she says, her voice ending in a whimper.

He thrusts into her forcefully; his power takes her by surprise so that she catches her breath for a moment, holding it, frozen, suspended in time. He pushes into her again, more slowly, the force of his hands, his body, his hips pinning her to the floor and bringing back to her, again and again, the latent power that he holds so well within his skin. She had thought Oakley would be a hasty or a selfish lover, a young lover, but this part of him, this Oakley is not a boy, not even a young man. This part of him is eternal, golden, as wise as an old, old man but, she thinks, smiling, with the body of a strong young one.

The length of his body slides against hers, and he lets go one of her arms, reaches down and presses on her as he thrusts in. The muscles of her body tense against him. He presses hard and she holds her breath. She cries out as the pulses spread through her, keeping time with his pounding hips. Her breasts heave as the rush of orgasm flows through her, deepening in time with his rhythm. Her elbow, pinned above her head still, pushes into a bottle on the lowest shelf as they inch across the floor, bodies joined. Her hair pulls behind her back. The bottles clank together with his rhythm, sending a shiver through the whole shelf, and through her.

He presses in closer, the skin of his shoulder near her lips. She drags her teeth across his warm skin, lightly biting. His eyes fly open and he grips her breasts in his hands, and then suddenly thrusts in, deeply. He tenses, lets out a deep sound from his chest. She feels him pounding inside of her, the rhythmic pulse, deeper than she has ever felt. The pleasure of it, and the pain, roots her to the ground, presses her into the hard floor. She gasps for air, and her breathing slows. He is heaving, his heart pounding. He holds her still to the ground, relishing the power of her wrists held in his grip. He leans down, brings his mouth almost to hers, his breath heavy. He licks the corner of her mouth, looks at her, teasing, watching her face for evidence of his influence.

He trails a finger down between her legs, exploring the folds there, slowly, tenderly, feeling the last pleasure-beat of her orgasm. Impulsively, quickly, he lets go of her arm, kisses down her neck, between her breasts, down to her navel. He nibbles her hip, laughs lightly, and drops down to slide his tongue between her legs. The roughness of his tongue startles her, and he flicks it, quickly, over the sensitive spot, presses, bites lightly, his lips covering his teeth.

He sinks his fingers into her waist and kisses lightly, then pulls her just barely between his lips, sucking and pressing his mouth together. She pushes her hips toward him, a movement she cannot control, and she feels the rough scratch of new stubble on her inner thigh as he moves slowly now, languorously. He pulls himself higher, then, and takes her soft breast into his mouth, sucking its rosy tip. In an instant pushes his two fingers into her, moving them quickly until she is bucking her hips against him, crying out, calling for him to finish it. It finds her again, breaking over her like an ocean wave, delicious pain mixed with pleasure. She is so spent she can barely make a sound. Her breath comes soft, hushed. He dips his tongue into her mouth, sliding it along the roof of her mouth and along her upper lip.

She looks up at him, shaken, and to her deep satisfaction she sees the mark of her on him as well: his tight, controlled smile, his sneer, are wiped away, his lips loose and round, his breath rushing between them. He closes his eyes, leans in and kisses her, holding her face in his two hands. A low moan comes from his throat, and maybe from hers as well; she is so deep in his arms she can no longer tell where her own body ends and his begins.  


	6. Moonlight

Lou lingers with Oakley in the cellar, pulls her dress back on, arranges it, ties up her hair again with the scarf, slides her sandals onto her feet. He lays on the ground watching her as she puts herself back together, a slow, pleased smile on his face.

She pokes him with her toe. “What are you smiling at?” she teases.

He leans down and licks the top of her foot. She squeals. He laughs.

He puts his arms behind his head, looks up at her again, his eyes so open, so full of light that she can hardly believe he is the same person she walked with on the beach before the rain, with the clouded brow, the doubts, the grim loneliness.

“What will I say when they ask why it took so long?”

“Why what took so long, Lou?” he asks.

“Me getting the Chianti. Petra asked me nearly twenty minutes ago. Or so.”

“Or so,” he repeats, smiling. He strides easily to the scant pile of his clothing, pulls it on, and reaches up to a high shelf. “Chianti,” he says, gesturing to her with the bottle. “I’ll be right back. You stay right here.”

He opens the cellar door and leaps up the steps and toward the house to do her errand for her, and Lou can’t help but be thankful. Somehow all she wants to do is be with Oakley, just stay by him at every moment, and forget about the others. Petra and Gio, Verena and George, they are happy enough together: two nice neat couples. She and Oakley are shooting stars, unraveled cloth, loose ends.

He appears again in the doorway. He gestures to her with his head again, the way he did the first day when they met. She likes the motion for its arrogance, for its command. Normally she wants to push back when a man tells her what to do, but for some reason with Oakley she wants to follow.

Out in the courtyard, dusk is falling. It is quite balmy now, with just a slight chill; smoke rises from the chimney of the house.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“I told them you were feeling homesick,” he says. “I’m taking you for a walk to get your mind off of things.”

She smiles and hooks her arm in his. “Thank you, Oakley.”

He squeezes her arm. “Don’t thank me,” he says. “I’m being selfish.”

“Selfish? How?”

“I want you all to myself, Lou. I don’t want to share you.”

Their feet crunch in time in the gravel. The sun is beginning its decline; the sky is a quiet, dusky purple color. Oakley pauses at the head of the driveway, picks up a tiny copper lantern, and lights it quickly with his cigarette lighter.  Warm light flickers through the tiny holes punched in the shiny orange metal. He reaches up, hangs it on the brick pillar where the drive meets the road, and takes Lou’s hand.

“Our beacon,” he says. “So we can find our way back.”

They walk along the grey strip of road for a few minutes, down and away from Gio’s property, along a ridge, through a soft field lined with cypress trees. In a clearing that follows, Oakley holds Lou’s hand tight, pulls her into a field of tall grass, barely waving in the breeze. She wades in, the blades tickling her shins, her thighs.

She watches his back with satisfaction, the simple movement of his shoulder blades beneath the light blue polo shirt, the shifting of the muscles on either side of his spine as he walks carefully ahead, one foot in front of the other.

From under his arm he pulls the tight roll of a linen sheet; he unfurls it in the field and it floats down, an enormous square resting on top of the bent grass. Lou can smell its fresh laundry scent. He gestures grandly at it and she steps down, reclines on the pillowy surface. He sits down beside her, moves immediately to her neck, kissing warmly with tiny kisses from her ear to her shoulder.

“Haven’t you had enough by now?” giggles Lou, smiling at him and biting her lip.

“Never enough,” he says, smiling, his eyes closed. “I will let you alone soon. I’m just not done with this yet.”

“With what?”

“With touching you, Lou.”

She sits, stunned. “Touching me?”

He traces a finger along the edge of her earlobe, taps the finger then to her lips as if he is silencing her, then draws a smooth line from her lips down her chin, down her chest, into the valley between her breasts. He pushes one hand slowly inside her dress and holds her breast in his hand, lightly caressing with his fingertips.

“You’re just so lovely.”

She laughs then, and feels as if she is about to cry.

“You’re adorable when you laugh,” he says.

“Ha. I haven’t been adorable for years,” she says.

“You’re adorable right now,” he says.

“I’m not,” she says.

“You are. Lou, let me see you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me see all of you,” he says, pushing the dress slowly off her shoulder, his breath tickling her skin.

“Didn’t you just see me?” she asks, laughing, almost embarrassed.

“I was a bit distracted then, Lou. I just want to look at you now. Let me see you.”

She pulls the dress back up on her shoulder. She points to the road. “It’s still light enough for people to see,” she says. “People driving by.”

“We’re in Italy. No one cares.” He laughs, then sees that she is serious. “After the sun sets, then,” he says. “When it’s just us and the moon.”

She says nothing.

“Deal?”

“Deal,” she says. “But one condition.”

“A condition?” he asks, softly. “What is it?”

“Answer my questions.”

“Sure, sure, Lou. Ask away.” He presses a solitary kiss to her neck. “Anything you want to know.”

“Why are you  _really_  with George and Verena? You’re a grown man.”

He leans back on his elbows, frowns. He scratches his head.

“I feel like you should be off, having your own adventures, you know?” she looks at him.

He looks sharply at her.

“I don’t mean that I don’t want you to be here,” she says. “I don’t mean—what I mean is that… I guess I just wonder why you might stick so closely by them, when George is… when, well, you don’t really seem to get along with him that well.”

Oakley looks up at the sky. “It’s just family,” he says.

She waits for him to go on. He says nothing. “So, they’re your family, so you stick with them?”

“No, it’s—when I was growing up, my own parents, they don’t – or, they didn’t – they weren’t very good at being really like parents. They would forget about things, like, they wouldn’t buy me or my sister any new clothes when we grew out of our old ones. We would just stretch and grow in them, and then a teacher would send home a note asking our parents to buy us new clothes, and then they would yell at us for not taking care of our things properly. We’d end up with a few secondhand things, enough to keep the teachers from writing more notes for four or five more months, until we grew again.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” she says, softly.

He nods.

“And I didn’t know you have a sister.”

“I do. She’s older. Two kids. Married an accounts manager. In  _Leeds_.” He says it with dripping contempt.

“Do you miss her?”

“No,” he says quickly. “I couldn’t miss her. I don’t even really know her.” He is silent for a moment. He pulls the cigarettes from his pocket, lights one.

“Oh.”

“So, anyway,” he says, taking a deep drag, “after this went on for years, after Catherine got married, George came in and saw what was going on, and he thought he’d take me off to a better life. So he moved me in with him and Verena and their kids.”

“Oh, I see,” says Lou.

“So I’m kind of like his kid, in a way. There’s a love there you can’t really get rid of,” he says. “Even if you want to.”

“What do you mean?”

“George and I have gotten into some pretty… deep fights before,” he says. “Since I turned about 20, I don’t stand for it really anymore. But we still fight sometimes. We get into it.”

He looks at her, hesitates for a moment, then pulls down the collar of his shirt to expose his shoulder. There is a silvery-white scar, an indentation in the skin there. She reaches up her fingers, traces the white line on his warm, tan flesh.

“Pushed me into a glassed-in dresser,” he says. “The glass broke, plates crashing everywhere. Twelve stitches. Cut to the bone.”

“Oh, my god,” she says.

He nods. Smokes for a moment. “It wasn’t good.”

“What… then why…”

“Sometimes the familiar is the thing you go to,” he says. “It doesn’t make logical sense. I tried it, though, for a while. I tried to go off on my own, and not talk with George, not talk with Verena, leave my parents to themselves.”

“What happened?”

“I felt like I was floating off somewhere, like I was made of all these weird pieces of broken crockery, and I was just floating apart.” He laughs drily. “I know it sounds crazy. I don’t feel like I’m really me unless I’m near them. They’re crazy, but they’re part of, they’re kind of a part of what I am. It holds me together. I know, it’s nuts.”

“Not entirely,” she says. “There was a man I used to date, back in California. He was… he was one of those men who was really charismatic, but really sort of bent and broken. But he would always have a great idea of where we should go to eat. I know  _that_  sounds crazy, but part of what I missed about him – part of what made it so hard to leave him in the end – was that sureness. I never had to pause and ponder the question of where to go. He just always knew. And he was always right. Best year of meals I ever had. Now that, my good sir, is crazy.”

“He sounds like a peach,” says Oakley, his eyebrows raised mockingly.

She laughs. “It was years ago,” she says, waving her hand.

“Tell me more about years ago,” he says. “I long to hear your American stories.” He smiles.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m serious! I mean it. What’s your story, Lou?”

“It’s pretty basic,” she says. “Grew up in Ohio, moved around a lot, ended up in school in California, worked for a while, now I’m at Berkeley for Public Administration.”

“Whew,” he says. “Sounds heavy.”

“Not too much,” she says. “I’m good at school. I like it. It’s what comes after that concerns me.”

“Well, what comes after, for you?”

“I’m starting a nonprofit,” she says, proudly.

“What for? Like, what will you do?”

“City gardens,” she says, proudly. Help with startup, charters, rules, community participation. That sort of thing. It’s exciting, but it’s terrifying at the same time.”

He watches her, silent, smiling.

“What are you staring at, Oakley?”

“You. You light up when you talk about it.” He smiles, leans in and kisses her shoulder. Moves his arm across her, presses her softly to the ground. “We’re all alone,” he says into her ear. “It’s dark.” He kisses her slowly, deeply.

She feels the pit of her stomach shaking, that quivering, rocking feeling she gets when he talks sweet and touches her. It is deeper now, more gripping.

“When you talk, you make me realize something, Lou,” he says.

“What?” she smiles as he moves his hand up her thigh.

“That I’m a piece of shit,” he says, kissing her neck again.

She sits up. A cold knot in her gut. “What do you mean?”

He presses her back down again. “I’m a shitty person,” he says. “I just want to be a doctor because I want to be a hero and get rich.”

“And you’re intelligent, and you’ll do well at it,” she says. Lightly indignant.

“I don’t need your pity,” he says, his hands moving down the sides of her body, gripping her hard through the thin fabric. “It’s all right. I’m used to being useless.” He laughs a mirthless laugh.

“Oakley!” she sits up. “What are you saying? Why are you saying these things?”

“You’re a real person with real dreams,” he says, his hands sliding up to clasp her breasts. “I’m an overgrown teenager. I’m not a serious person. I’m a joke.” He kisses her cheek lightly.

“No,” she says, firmly. She sits all the way up, rolls him over, pushes him down and pins him to the sheet. His eyes widen. She can feel his heartbeat pounding beneath her arm.

“Lou, what are you—“

“You never speak about yourself that way in front of me again,” she says. “Is that understood?”

“I…”

She presses harder with her arm, barring his chest, pressing him into the ground. The grass blows gently around them. “Say ‘Yes, ma’am,’” she says.

“I…”

She pushes her arm up to this throat, pressing gently. “ _Say it_.”

“Y-Yes ma’am,” he says, taking a big breath in. He holds it, his eyes wide.

She leans in close to him, only an inch or two from his face.

“Don’t disobey me on this,” she says. “You’ll be sorry if you do.”

“What will you…” his voice wavers, his grip on her thighs tightening. She can feel his fingertips digging into her flesh.

“I’ll make you learn,” she says. “I’ll make you study until you’re sure how valuable you are.”

“What?” he looks at her, fear shaded by arousal on his face. She is enjoying this, more than she thought she would. She is not sure where this came from, this commanding voice that speaks from her mouth. She does know that she feels the power deliciously; it runs through her veins, warming her.

“I’ll make sure you  _never_  forget it,” she says, whispering in his ear. She hovers over his mouth, touches her tongue to his upper lip, pulls it quickly away again. “Do you want to make me mad?”

He stirs beneath her. She reaches up, unties the scarf from her hair. She clicks her tongue. “Don’t move until I tell you,” she says.

He takes a deep breath, his face glowing. She can see his pulse pounding in his neck. She takes both of his arms, holds his wrists together, loops the scarf lightly around them. She ties a gentle knot, holding them together. Barely.

She reaches down and in one motion pulls the shorts off again, smiling down at him.

She slides into his embrace, so that his arms are holding her to him, held tightly by his two bound wrists. “Oakley,” she says softly, teasingly. “Is this what you want?”

He can barely speak. He nods. “Yes,” he says, his voice carrying away on the breeze. “Yes.” His eyes blink softly. “Lou…”

She pulls her skirt up and slides down on him, already risen and rock hard. She rides up and down, slowly, feeling the tight grip of his arms around her. She looks down at his face, sees a sort of burning illumination there, as if he is lit from within by some flame. His eyes hold hers; his lips part slightly.

She quickens her movements; he strains to meet his hips to hers, to join her rhythm. His eyes close; a soft moan. She bears down hard then, pushing and straining against his quickening hips until she feels him on the brink; he makes a choking sound in his throat and clamps her tightly, his arms sweaty, holding her to him, pushing up into her. Deep. Deeper. He gasps, breathes freely then. Heavily. His grip relaxes, a slow smile on his face.

She throws her head back. She holds her breath, pushing down, holding for a moment until he moves to the right spot, moves his hips slightly. She lets out a sigh, the gentle climax washing over her. She looks down at him, his eyes cloudless, liquid. She leans in close to him, grips him to her, rolls over so that she is pinned now beneath him.

“Now you,” she says.

He raises his eyebrows , questioning.

She reaches up behind her, pulls the knot of the scarf loose. “Tell me what to do, Oakley,” she says. “Anything you want.” She looks up at him, her mouth slightly open. “I’ll obey.”

He smiles, grips her tightly, a smile half of wonder, half of bare triumph, spreading over his face.

“Stand up,” he says. “Take off your dress, Lou.”

He rolls back over, leans back on his elbows. The blue moonlight caresses the angles of his face, his chin, his chest, his long, lean arms. She stands.

He smiles. “Let me see you.”


	7. Morning

They wake up together, still in the field, in the first grey light of the new dawn, a coating of dew on their bodies. Lou stirs first, rolls over and sees Oakley there, resting in the crook of her arm, his mouth slightly parted. She reaches out, brushes her fingers through his golden curls lightly, tenderly.

It grabs her, the sudden clutch of feeling. It is unavoidable. She had thought Oakley was fun, that he would just be a bit of fun, and she thought he felt the same way, too, but after last night – talking under the stars, watching for the ones that fell and repeating his funny little Italian poem to wish on each one, she is not so sure. She remembers the soft look in his eyes as they made love. The fact that in her mind she is calling it “making love” – calling it anything at all – it all leads up to this. Tenderness. The sunlight warming his sleeping frame, lighting his beautiful locks and the fine silken hair that stands up all along his arms, the soft fuzz on the nape of his neck. She feels drawn to him, to his body, even to the soul of him; feels the old pull in her gut. She feels it like a sickness.

He rolls over, groans, runs his hands slowly over his hair. He turns his face and opens his eyes. She watches as the haze of sleep leaves him, as he realizes where he is. He looks up at her and smiles, and her heart is stricken.

She swallows hard, tries to fight it all down. She leans away, starts to stand, but he reaches out and pulls her to him, kisses her warmly. She feels her heart pounding in her throat.  “Bella Lou,” he says, laughing warmly.

He hugs her tightly, then sits up, stretches his legs out, searches through the tall grasses, now still in the breezeless dawn, for his shoes. She stands, reaches her arms to the sky, bends low to snatch up the sheet, gather it into a tight roll and hold it under her arm. She looks at the space that it left – a flattened square, two low indentations where their bodies rested. He looks over at it too, kicks the grass gently to stand the bent blades back up again.

They walk slowly up the hill, in silence. The sun seems to rise quickly, and by the time they are back at the house the silvery newness of the morning has burned off and the day is already growing warm and brilliantly sunny. She yawns.

At the door, he looks at her, holds her hand, and pushes into the front room.

No one is up yet. They steal silently to the kitchen, where Oakley makes coffee and Lou cuts two thick slabs of spice cake on the sideboard. She hasn’t eaten in almost a full day.

They push forkfuls of the cool, dense cake into their mouths and sip steaming coffee, sitting at the big, wide oak table. Oakley scoots his foot across the floor until it is touching hers. He looks down at his cake and smiles a tiny, private smile. Lou feels it again, the kick in the gut, the first kindling of love, fatwood set ablaze by a tiny match. There is still time to blow it out, to kill it and snuff it and see the fragrant smoke rising to the ceiling.

Oakley pushes the last bite of cake around on his plate, drawing tiny lines in the icing smeared on the plate with the edge of his fork. He takes a deep breath. “Lou,” he says.

He looks up and in his eyes she sees a riot of color, of emotion. Something bursting to get out. Something raw. Something that will hurt.

Footsteps sound on the stairs, and Verena appears. “Morning!” she says, brightly. “Didn’t hear you two come in!”

“It was late,” says Oakley flatly, running his hand along the back of his neck.

“You feeling better this morning, Louise?”

“Much,” she says, smiling. “There’s still some coffee left, if you want.”

Petra and Gio come down and greet the room.

“Lou, are you coming with us to town?” asks Petra.

“Actually, if you don’t mind, I think I might stay here and rest,” says Lou. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Difficult night?” asks Petra.

“Just couldn’t turn my thoughts off,” says Lou. “And Oakley and I hiked around quite a bit as well.”

“There is so much to see around here,” says Petra, smiling.

“It’s an ancient place, but there’s always something new, isn’t there?” says Gio.

“Exactly right,” says Lou.

“What about you, Oakley?” says Verena. “Town?”

“I promised Gio I’d help with the roof,” he says, draining the last of his coffee from the cup and standing up.

“Ah,” she says. “That’s good of you. Let’s see if we can avoid a repeat of… yesterday.”

Oakley looks suddenly at Lou. “Yes,” he says. She sees a wildness in his eyes, wants nothing more than to be alone with him for five more minutes, for him to get to say what he wants to say. For her to calm her heart, to get ready to put out the flame.

Suddenly Lou feels very tired. She says good day to everyone in the room and walks up the stairs, slowly, deliberately. She sinks into her bed and falls asleep almost instantly, her face buried in the puffy down pillow.

–

She wakes up in the early afternoon, the sound of clanking tiles and banging hammers on the roof above her room. Through the open window she hears what woke her up: George, on the lawn, calling up to Oakley.

“Your mum’s on the phone,” he says.

“Why is she calling? Why is she calling  _here_?” she hears Oakley’s voice, thin and muffled from the roof.

“She didn’t call, your highness, I called  _her_. Or rather, I called your father.”

Oakley doesn’t answer.

Lou hears the scrabble of feet and hands, the creaking of a wooden ladder, and then footsteps inside the house. She ties her hair up in a knot, pulls on fresh clothes, and tiptoes to the head of the stairs.

“I don’t know why this is—“ she hears Oakley say. A pause. “I was going to tell you… Later. When I got back… No, I don’t think it’s a funny secret… Yes, I knew that George knew. I told him… I know, Mum. Dad and his father and everyone’s father before him.” A sarcastic tone creeps into his voice. He is silent; listening.

Lou hears only the click of the receiver as Oakley drops it down, the sound of his footsteps punctuating the silence. She wants to go to him, to talk to him, but an invisible hand holds her back.

Suddenly, Oakley appears at the foot of the stairs, and begins running up. He is not watching and nearly runs into her in the dim upper hallway. He looks at her, his cheeks flushed bright red. She sees the smallest hint of tears in his red-rimmed eyes. He bites his lip, dips past her, and runs to the end of the hallway to Petra and Gio’s room. He returns a moment later with a pair of fabric gloves, runs silently outside. She hears him climb the ladder again.

Suddenly Lou feels restless, and she pulls on her hiking sandals and puts on a hat and walks outside and quickly away from the house. She follows the same path she did on her first day here, down to the water. She climbs farther and farther down until she reaches the stone platform overlooking the water. She gathers her legs up, hugs her knees to her chest, looks out at the water. Its vastness comforts her. She waits for wisdom, or an answer. Any answer.

One cloud scuds across the sky. Nothing comes to her.

Over an hour later, she scoots close to the stone wall, leaning back on it. She cannot decide whether to avoid Oakley now, or to seek him out.

Then, she hears footsteps, and she knows it is him. He appears around the side of the wall, sees her, takes a deep breath. He walks to her, and without a pause, takes her face in his hands and kisses her, a great, broad, open kiss. She feels the warmth of the sun on the top of her head. She reaches her arms up, hooks them behind his neck, kisses him back, telling him in a kiss what she wishes she could say in words.

When he pulls away, he looks at her. “Tell me what to do, Lou,” he says, his eyes searching her face.

“I don’t know anything, Oakley,” she says.

“George called my parents,” he says. “Told them everything. Pre-medicine, leaving home – everything. They’ve cancelled my enrollment at university.”

“Oh, no! Oakley, that’s terrible. Why would they do that?  _How_  can they do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I have to makes some calls, figure it out. They say it’s because of my ‘selfish ways,’” he says. He looks down at the ground, kicks at a pebble.

She is silent. She puts a hand on his arm. A gentle squeeze.

“Mum told me not to come back,” he says. “’Don’t come home, Oak.’”

“Oh, God.”

“Funny thing is, Lou, I’m not even sorry. I feel better. I feel lighter. I should be angry, but I’m not.” He shakes his head. “I’m angry at George, but other than that I’m relieved.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have to love them anymore,” he says. “I don’t have to care.” He lights a cigarette.

“Do you mean that? Truly?”

“I think I do. I’m done with them.”

She says nothing.

“It starts to feel like I’m free.”

She reaches over, laces her fingers in his, traces the veins on the back of his hand.

“I just don’t have any allies now. No family even, really,” he says. Just a hint of regret. “I’m alone.” He sets his face. Hard.

“Not completely alone,” she says softly. Her heart starts to hammer and she wills herself to be silent.  _No confessions now_ , she commands herself.

He looks at her, strangely. She cannot read what it is that washes over his face, just sees again the wild rioting of feeling locked behind his eyes. She squeezes his hand gently.

He leans in, pecks her on the cheek. “I have to go take care of some things,” he says. He pats the back of her hand. He starts to walk away, turns and comes back, kisses her again. She feels him drawing something from her: energy. Strength. She gives him everything she can, bolstering him, bearing him up. She rests her hands lightly on his broad shoulders, lets go the gentle kiss. He is gone, taking the stairs two at a time.

Lou looks down, picks up the pebble from the stone floor and pitches it into the lapping, grey-green sea.


	8. Lost

“It’s just you and me for dinner tonight,” says Petra, smiling gently at Lou as she returns to the house an hour later.

“What do you mean?”

“Our guests are gone. Give us a chance to catch up a little.” She pats Lou’s arm, smiles again.

“Who? Who’s gone?”

“George and Rena,” she says. “They went with Oakley to the station.” She laughs. “I would think you would be glad to see them gone.”

“I would be,” says Lou. “Just—“

“Just what, darling?”

She feels suddenly ill. “Just a moment, Petra. I need to walk outside for a moment. Just… I’ll be right back in.”

She nearly runs outside, shoeless, the grass prickling her feet. She runs to the flat paving stones at side of the house, keeps walking, stumbling to where the back door meets the garden path.  _Gone_. She looks there, doesn’t see Oakley’s shoes. She looks in the back door. The rooms are clear, the linens stripped from the beds.

Just like that, then. Gone.

She bends over, tears in her eyes. She isn’t sure what she expected to be different, what she really wanted to happen, but it wasn’t this. No goodbye.

She takes a deep breath, flicks tears out of her eyes, and straightens up. She walks back to the house with careful, measured steps. At the door, she sets her face to a gentle smile.

“You all right?” calls Petra.

“Fine, just fine,” she says, keeping her voice calm and low. “So, tell me about the fall! Where are you and Gio going? I heard him talking about new plans.”

“Darling, it’s wonderful,” says Petra, pouring wine. “I’m so glad I get to tell you all about it.”

The sun sinks below the trees and Lou feels the dim warmth of friendship driving out the worst of the chill.

–

Late that evening, Lou and Petra sit in front of the crackling fire in the front room. The logs snap and the air smells vaguely smoked, like the smell of fall back in the Midwest, when they would gather all the leaves from the two maple trees in the great front yard of Granny’s farmhouse, rake them into a pile, jump into them. As night fell they would light the piles on fire in the fire pit, laugh and dance around as the leaves turned to orange webbed gossamer, bits of ash floating to the sky and sinking back down again, sticking in the ends of their hair, resting on their shoulders.

Petra and Gio would be leaving the house in only three weeks, moving on to another banking project that Gio’s company was involved with, in Greece.

“It’s a mess in Greece right now,” says Petra. “But Gio and the board have some interesting ideas to get part of the real estate market back on track.”

“Sounds good, Petra,” says Lou. “I’ve heard that Greece really is lovely.”

“Mostly, it is,” says Petra. “I’m not sure where we’ll be staying, but we’ll surely be near the coast at some point. You have to come back and see us again,” she says.

The door bursts open so suddenly it makes them both jump. Petra spills a bit of wine on the couch, starts laughing. She flicks the beads of red liquid off the pillows. “Gio!” she says. “Be gentle! We nearly jumped out of our skin.”

“Sorry, dearest Petra,” he says, smiling. He leans down and kisses her. “I am too tired to think about these things. We just got the last of the new tiles unloaded. Starting again in the morning on the last section of the roof.”

Lou’s breath stops in her throat.  _We?_

“Oh, that’s good,” says Petra. “I’m so glad Oakley could stay back and help you finish.”

“I’m so sweaty,” laughs Gio. “I stink like a horse.”

Petra laughs.

Lou grips her glass tightly, taking deep breaths. She stands slowly, moves to the kitchen, leaves her glass by the sink. She runs out the side door, desperate to find him.

–

At the back of the house, she sees the moon, risen high in the sky. A glow comes from the upper windows of the slumping garden shed by the old tiled saltwater spa. Lou moves blindly toward it, pushing in the door.

A blast of steam hits her face. She waves her hands in front of her, and when the steam clears a bit she sees him, his perfect frame, his shoulders and back, his bare legs. He stands below a shower head in the corner of the shed, running his hands through his sudsy hair, no curtain pulled to shield him from the door. He turns suddenly toward her.

His eyes catch hers and she runs to him, rushes directly to him and stands with him under the streaming water.

“I thought you left,” she says.

He laughs. “Why would I go without telling you?” he asks. He leans in and kisses her, soapy water streaming down both of them.

He bends down and runs his lips down her wet neck. She puts her hands into his soapy hair, spreading it out as the water rinses through it.

He runs his hands down her back, pushes her drenched dress off of her and to the floor. Her bra and panties stick to her like second skin.

“I’m so glad you’re still here,” she says, dropping kisses on his cheek, his neck, his chest, down his muscled torso. She kneels down on the warm, wet tile floor, runs her hands down his legs, lithe and trunklike at the same time, bound with muscle; springy and lean.  She barely pauses, takes him into her mouth, the tip first, then as much of his length as she can. He leans back against the cypress wall, his hand gripping the shelf that holds a bar of ginger-smelling soap. He lets out a hard breath. “Oh, God, Lou,” he says, his voice ragged.

She leans in and out again, drawing back from him his strength, his sureness. His warm confidence. She grips his thighs tightly, moves faster, sliding deliberately to tease, to prolong the pleasure that shudders through his body.

He cradles her head in one hand, a louder moan slipping from his lips. His body tenses; he comes easily, forcefully, pounding into her. Warmth from him and from the shower streams down, pours on her, streams down from her lips between her breasts. He grips her, pulls her up to him, pushes the strands of wet hair from her face, holds both her arms in his hands so tightly she feels the pain of his fingers, curled around her, grasping her tight like a lifeline.

“Stay here, Lou,” he says, his voice quiet, intense. “Stay with me. Dear God, stay here with me.”

She doesn’t respond. He holds her to his bare chest as his breath gradually slows, as the water turns from hot to warm to chilly rivulets between them.


	9. Dive

The dawn is bright and obscene. Lou watches it from her window. She brought her coffee upstairs to be alone, to avoid all of it, to keep from running into Oakley, to keep from seeing his fresh, beautiful eyes, brimming with the unanswered questions of last night. She wouldn’t tell him no, and she wouldn’t tell him yes. She is a swirling kettle of bubbling soup. Thick. Roiling. She stayed with him into the early morning hours, sitting with him in the fine, thin grass in the courtyard. In hushed tones he made his case while she picked the tender blades of grass one by one: pinched them in her fingers and pulled them until they snapped.  _You don’t have to go, do you, Lou? Cancel your tickets._ Her heart broke at his earnestness, his sureness. At how simple he seemed to think it would be. And yet she couldn’t do it then, couldn’t break his heart and walk inside. Something held her there with him, made her sit and take in his pleas, watch the stars come out. Hold his hand in hers, his grip on her hand confident; uncomplicated.  _I have to go_ , she said, and he had only sighed.

From below she hears voices. Oakley emerges from the house, walks, springing, to the Fiat. He slams the door, starts it up, and drives away, down the crunching gravel driveway.

He is gone all day.

Lou morosely packs her things, takes a long stroll around the edges of the garden. She thinks about going back to the field where she and Oakley spent the night, but decides against it. She feels the press of too much thought and too much feeling on her skull, clamping her like a vise.

She has to get back to Berkeley, finish her research, finish her writing and submit her thesis. It all waits for her, unfinished, in neat piles of printed letter-size paper on her broad yellow formica desk from the library surplus sale. Reams of it, stacked and collated, full of her words and visions for a greener urban culture.

The words seem useless now. After lunch she trudges back up to her room and gives herself over to what she has been pressing away for days: tears. She lays on the bed and cries, her sobs shaking her shoulders. She hasn’t cried like this, not in earnest, since she was about nineteen years old, when her first college boyfriend told her it just wasn’t working out, when she had thought they were in love. He was the last boy for her; she had been so sure, and her tears had gone on for days.

Something in Oakley takes her back to that time, that late adolescence, when everything was buzzing and dripping and full of life, full of nectar. She sees her life before she met him – just four days ago – and it seems bleached and pale, a black-and-white version of the Technicolor life she is living now. Everything has been turned up to full volume. The messy crackle of it plays over the speakers and echoes through the villa like an old bossa nova record.

She had thought that her biggest struggle would be to keep her distance from him, to keep the strength to walk away from him with her dignity in place at the end of the week, to give a dry wave from the train window and snake down the coast in the rattling, dusty cars. Face-down on the bed with her tears soaking into the sheets, she knows that the challenge is a different one. There is a door open to something much more frightening than leaving Oakley tomorrow morning.

There is a door open to love.

–

She insists on making dinner for their last night together in the villa. She has to shoo Petra and Gio out of the kitchen constantly while she shucks oysters and rubs coarse sea salt and lemons onto the great silvery fish on its huge baking pan.

They eat until they are stuffed, feast on the seafood, sliced zucchini, airy sourdough bread sliced on a floured board, drizzled with olive oil so virgin it’s as green as grass. Petra and Gio push back from the table. Lou finishes her glass of light gold wine and sighs contentedly.

“It’s so nice of you to have me here,” she says.

“Our pleasure,” says Gio, stretching his arm around Petra. “We are glad you have had a good time.”

“Very much,” she says. She laughs. “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much wine in one week.”

They laugh. “In Italy, that is the way,” says Gio.

They clear the table and Petra and Gio insist on washing the dishes themselves. She walks out into the courtyard, where she can see dusk beginning to fall. Out here, alone, she feels jittery again; unsettled.

He appears from the shadows: tall and lean. Silent. He strides toward her, his hands in his pockets. She reaches out and wraps her arms around him, around the lean trunk of him, holds him so that her face presses into the front of his rumpled shirt. Tiny drops of water fall from his hair and land on the backs of her hands, wrapped tightly around him.

“Why are you wet?” she asks.

He leans down and kisses her. Slowly; softly. She tastes salt on his lips.

“Were you down by the water?”

He takes a deep breath, holds it. Nods his head.

“You should have waited for me, Oakley. I wanted to go down and see it one last time.”

“Come down with me now,” he says, his eyes wide. He seems nervous.

They walk quietly together in the deepening dusk, down the pathway, over the pebbles. The way is familiar to Lou now; she knows the curves and twists, the places on the path where she needs to lean into the cliff side, and when she needs to place her feet down carefully.

She holds his arm as they pass the stone wall and begin the steeper descent to the stone platform at the water. He walks steadily. He is sure, solid. There is something newly confident about him.

On the platform he stops, leans down and grabs her ankle gently, pulls one sandal from her foot, then the other.  She feels his breath on her neck as leans in close to whisper in her ear: “It’s time.”

His words send a shiver through her body. She looks up at him. “Time for what?”

He gestures toward the water, and she understands.  _Time to jump_.

“Now?” her voice scales up and her nerves begin to show. The dark water lapping beneath them, the feeling of falling.

He laughs lightly, squeezes her hand tightly. “It’s all right, Lou. I’m coming too.”

“Okay,” she says, her voice shaking. She walks to the edge of the platform, curls her toes along the edge, looks down.

“No, not like that,” he says. “Like this.” He turns her around so that they are standing side by side, staring at the cliff face, the water behind them.

She hesitates. “Do I have to?”

“Don’t be afraid, Lou. The water will catch you.” He takes her arm in his and leans backward. She yields and follows him, and feels her body falling, the arc of their tandem forms bending backwards.

They splash into the water, head first, and she feels it swirl around her, dark and smooth. Bubbles rise up all around her, popping. She comes up from the surface first, and waits for him. He appears, wipes the water from his eyes, and smiles at her. “You did it, Lou,” he says. Moonlight plays on the water.

She wants him suddenly, and laughs at the timing. She wants to take his body to her own, to taste him, to feel his arms around her again. Here, with no ground beneath them, they would sink together, entwined. He turns and swims out from the platform. “Come on,” he says gently. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

She bites her lip and smiles, the anticipation making her heart hammer even more. The thin cotton of her dress moves around her legs like a veil, softly following behind her under the water.

They make their way down the rocky coastline, swimming for five minutes, then almost ten. Around a crag of rock, he reaches up and grabs hold of the root of a short, scrubby tree, and holds out the other hand to her. He pulls her through the water effortlessly and hauls himself up onto a rocky ledge. “Careful,” he says, gently pulling her up out of the water beside him.

She sees an indentation in the cliff face, some sort of opening. A small cave. They walk in, their feet splashing in the wetness on the floor. She is surprisingly steady on her feet; the rocks aren’t as slippery as she thought they might be. She holds tight to his arm. Just inside, she sees a flickering glow. Puzzled, she cranes her neck further and what she sees makes her gasp and hold Oakley’s arm.

And then she is crying.

Along the back wall of the cave he has set a trio of golden beeswax candles at different heights in the knobby stone. They light the cave with astonishing brightness; the light laps up the walls and back down again, bathing everything in an intimate, gleaming glow.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, wiping hot tears from her eyes. She leans into him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”

He holds her to him firmly. She looks up, warmth spreading across her face, down her limbs, throughout her whole body. The pulse of desire thrums through her. She pulls him to her, desperately, but he only looks down, a strange look in his eye.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, tracing her eyebrow with the tip of his finger.

Silence settles in. She watches his face as shades of feeling pass over it. He leans back from her slightly, looks at his feet. “I have nothing to give you,” he says.

“What?”

“I have literally nothing. I want to give you something, Lou. I want you to have something from me.”

“What do you mean? Oakley, I don’t need any ‘things.’” She reaches out to him, but he leans back from her still.

“I have nothing here at all, nothing except for my clothes. And there’s nothing in town, either. I spent all day looking.”

She puts a hand to her mouth, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Shh,” she says. “Stop.”

“But I did find something small. I made something for you.”

“What is it?” she asks. Her voice sounds soft and girlish and close in the tiny cave.

He reaches into his pocket, then looks up at the cave roof. He laughs, shakes his head. “I can’t believe this,” he says. “I can’t believe what I’m turning into. Lou, what have you done to me? I’m like a teenage boy. I’m almost embarrassed.”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she says, smiling. “Show me my present, Oakley.”

He pulls a cord of silk thread from his pocket, a trio of aquamarine threads in varying shades. They are twined together in a braided twist, weaving in and out of each other, and tied off with a tight knot at both ends. One single strand of silver thread is woven through the blue. It gleams in the candlelight.

“Oakley, it’s beautiful,” she says. “I love it.”

“I don’t know. It’s all I could do. The colors reminded me of you for some reason.” He clears his throat. She looks down at the cord. “It’s a bookmark, or a bracelet, or whatever you want it to be.”

“Thank you,” she says. The tenderness reaches out and grabs her again, holds her by the throat. She touches the soft silk with her finger.

He looks serious now, takes her arms in his warm hands. “I want something from you now, Lou.”

She smiles wickedly up at him, leans in. He kisses her. She feels his lips trembling. She pulls back.

“Promise me something, Lou.”

“What?”

“Anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Promise me anything that you can,” he says. “As much as you can.” He slides his hands slowly up and down her arms. “Nothing more, and not a bit less.”

She looks down at the braided cord in her hands, and up at him. “I…”

“Just promise me anything, Lou. Something.”

“I promise… I promise I will never forget you, Oakley.”

His chin pitches upward. He presses his mouth into a thin line. He takes a deep breath in, looks away from her at the wall of the cave. He breathes out, the air ragged in his throat.

“And I promise… that I will see you again.”

He looks back at her, a rush of feeling, of relief. She sees one thin tear standing in his right eye. It spills. She reaches up and brushes it away, off the warm skin of his cheek.

“Not just someday, but soon,” she says. “I have to go back and finish things at home. At school.” She loops the cord through her fingers, takes his hands in hers. “And you have some things to figure out here, too,” she says.

He nods.

“Fixing up the villa, settling things with your parents, with school, with your aunt and uncle.”

He nods again.

“But this isn’t it,” she says. “This isn’t the end. I can promise that.” She reaches up and traces the line of his jaw with her hand, stubble scratching her fingertips. “And for my part, I promise that until the day that I see you again…” She stops, gathering courage.

“What, Lou?”

“I’ll stay true to you, Oakley. Nobody else.”

His eyes widen, and to her surprise he sinks down to a crouch, sitting on a knob of rock. He looks up at her. “Lou, you would promise me  _that_? I would never ask… I didn’t expect… I wasn’t thinking of anything like that.”

“If it’s too much, it’s all right,” she says. “You can pretend like I didn’t say it. And I’m not trying to make you promise the same,” she says. “But for whatever it’s worth, in the time that we’re apart, there won’t be anyone else. Not for me.”

It surprises her how easily the words fall from her mouth, and how much she means them. How readily she stepped into an agreement with him. An agreement that could stretch forward into months, or even years.

“No,” he says. “I would never pretend you didn’t say it,” he says. Then quietly: “It’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

She looks down at the top of his head, his soft, damp curls. She runs her hand through them, pushes them back off his forehead.

“Am I worth that much, Lou?” She sees disbelief in his eyes, the shadow of some old pain.

She holds his hand tightly. “Good God, Oakley.  _Yes_. You’re worth all that, and even more.”

She pulls up on his arm. “Get up now, sir,” she says. “Stand up, and stop that sniveling.” She pokes his arm playfully.

He stands and she holds the cord out to him, offers her left arm, palm up. Her pulse jumps in the tender skin of her wrist.

“Tie a knot,” she says. “And it will stay on me until I see you again.”

He draws the silken cord up around her wrist, takes a deep breath. He ties a tight knot in it, winds the loose ends around and inside of the loop so that they do not trail down. A perfect circle. She feels its gentle pressure. He takes her hand in both of his, leans down and kisses the knot, his warm lips pressing the soft skin of her wrist.  He uncurls her fingers, presses a kiss into her palm.

She pulls him to her, kisses him, and the fire of held-in emotion blazes outward. She feels it in his mouth as he pushes her mouth with his, draws his tongue along the edge of her lips, along the roof of her mouth, its tip teasing the ridged skin behind her teeth. He walks her backward, presses her into the damp wall of the cave, kissing her neck, her shoulder. His hands tangle in her hair.

He slides her dress off her shoulder, leans down and takes her breast into his mouth, sliding his longue along the hardened tip, nipping, sucking gently. She lets out a soft moan and feels her limbs losing their strength. She wants to lay back on something to invite him closer in to her, but there is nowhere to lay down in the uneven, rocky, wet cave floor.

He looks at her, his eyes slow and soft in the flickering candlelight. He quickly unbuttons and drops his shirt to the cave floor, his wet, heavy shorts. She reaches up under her skirt and tugs down her wet panties, kicks them off in one motion. She smiles.

His face is serious, nearly unreadable. He presses into her, and she feels the warm length of his body through her wet dress. He pushes up the skirt, drags his hand lightly, maddeningly down the small of her back. She lets out a moan. He lifts her up onto a slight ledge so that she is looking down at him, his chin resting on her shoulder. He pushes into her, hard, and she cries out, feels him fill her completely. At this angle she feels as if she is falling backward, and is glad for the cave wall behind her. He reaches up, pins her wrists to the wall, gripping them tightly. He thrusts in again: slowly, deeply. She arches her back, draws her leg around him. Each time he thrusts he lifts her off the rock ledge for a split second. She feels gravity letting go, feels like she is in the swirling sea again. He speeds his rhythm and her body tenses against him, and she feels a raw warmth inside of her, gives in to her desire to surrender completely. He lets go one of her wrists, reaches down, strokes her softly as he pushes into her, again. Again. He moves his finger quickly, pushes into her deeply, a gasp in the back of his throat as he comes, hard, jerking his hips upward again, pushing as deeply into her as he can. He presses firmly into her and the beautiful glowing blankness washes over her at that moment. Her body throbs slowly, clenching tightly around him, waves of pleasure moving outward, craving him. He pushes in again, pressing her to the wall, and she leans over onto him, weakened, her shoulders heaving in rapid breath, her body shaking.

“Oh, God,” she says softly. “You’re so deep.”

His breath comes more evenly, slows for a moment, and they stand together still. He presses his ear to her chest, kisses the soft skin of her breast. His mouth finds hers and he grips her tightly, lowers her gently off the ledge.

He extinguishes the candles and leaves them there, the hot wax dripping down onto the dark rock, the smoke rising from the blackened wicks. He gathers his clothes under his arm and they walk out of the cave, hands held tightly, and plunge their bodies into the balmy, salty sea, swimming for the shore.


	10. Halcyon

It is a warm day, unseasonably warm. The high is in the mid-70s, and the sun shines down from a perfectly blue, cloudless sky. The blue deepens toward the horizon and is nearly the color of dark denim where the sky meets the grey line of the mountains in the distance.

Berkeley is usually cool this time of year. There is never snow, of course, but December usually yields a chilly wind and a bracing cold as the air comes down from the north and in from the water. Today, though, it could be spring, or even a mild summer day.

Lou’s feet are tired. They ache. Graduation was long and stately; she felt herself lulled almost to sleep by the droning of the keynote speaker. She looked up and saw her parents waving at her, tiny points in the distance. She heard her name called and walked to the stage, knelt down as her major professor drew the satin hood over her shoulders. A burst of quick applause as they shook hands and she strode off the stage with her diploma under her arm.

She feels the relief of it, of being done with her long years of study. These past months the hours have drawn on, heavier and slower, from morning until late evening in the library, hunched over piles of books and her little glowing laptop, clicking and typing sometimes even into the early hours of the morning.

She has been so busy, with research, with writing, with packing to move her things from the graduate student housing, that she hasn’t had much time this week to let her thoughts drift back to the summer, the sunny villa, the great blue-green ocean, the cave.

Oakley.

She keeps thoughts of him pressed to the outer wall of her mind, lets him in only when the other pressing concerns are taken care of. Thoughts of him are so delicious, yet so painful at the same time, that she can only take them in small doses.

At a late lunch with her parents today, she nearly gave in and told them about Oakley, explained the blue silk on her wrist, the strange quietness that would come over her at odd moments. But they were so full of plans and excitement for their Christmas vacation – a Norwegian cruise – that she settled contentedly into the role of listener, enjoying their excitement over seeing new places, new things. It meant spending Christmas on her own, but she had so much to do to prepare for her move south to L.A. that she didn’t think she’d mind. Her brother Anthony and his wife, Theresa, were staying home for the holiday as well; Theresa was eight months pregnant with their first child and didn’t care to travel. Anthony said he was happy just to sit by the fire and not go anywhere. The Colorado snow was just as beautiful from inside the house, he had said on the phone, laughing lightly.

She turns her key in the lock, pushes her apartment door open with her shoulder. It is chilly inside, despite the warmth of the day, and she shivers, pulling open the cord of her window shades. Nearly everything is packed now. She has only a few pots and pans to seal into a box, and the contents of one more suitcase, the things she uses every day, the few outfits left folded on top of her empty bureau.

She sits on the futon in her living room, letting out a sigh. The semester has been a long journey and she is glad, so glad that it is over. She twists open a cold bottle of root beer and then her thoughts march, against her will, back to Oakley.

They write as often as they can. The villa has no Internet connection, so he has to trek into town to the Internet café to read her emails. She writes them even when she feels she has nothing to report. She feels the greyscale coloring coming back into her life, creeping in and washing out the persistent color that followed her from her week in Italy.

He has sent her an email or two, but mainly he communicates in a funny way that seems old fashioned to Lou: every so often she unlocks her mailbox in the great grid of boxes for the whole complex, and she finds a thin manila envelope. Without reading the address she knows it is from him, and inside she finds a photograph, sometimes two or three, of whatever he did that week. She has a line of pictures pinned to the cork strip along her apartment wall: The garden, replanted. The rock wall, repaired. The roof, finally finished in new terra cotta tiles. A grape arbor over the pathway to the wine cellar, tendrils of vine wrapping their way up from the ground.

He is rarely in the pictures, and she wishes she could see more of him. On the back of each print he writes something brief and sweet: “Bella Lou, the silvery sage is beautiful, even in the fall.” “Beautiful lady, look at how proudly the new shed stands in the garden.”

He usually sends a picture at least every week, sometimes even twice. The last picture was of a packed suitcase on a train platform, but it has been nearly three weeks since she received anything from him. She wonders at the silence, and she sent him an email, and then a week later, another one, but she has heard nothing. In his last note to her, a month ago, he said he was remembering their evening in the cave, how he loved the look on her face when she first saw the candlelight. She wrote back how much she enjoyed the surprise, how sometimes in her daily trek to the library and back home again in the dark, she wished she could go back to that moment again.

And then he had stopped sending photos, stopped writing. She had thought this time might come, that he would lose interest and slide out of her life, but she hadn’t thought it would be quite so early. Her plan had been to get her things moved, and then see where he was, fly out for a few days, forget about everything behind her until the first of February, when her job with the L.A. garden collective would start. One of the blessings of a year-round growing season was the need for year-round administrative help; this job was the inroad she needed to learn about setting up her own agency, hopefully within the next five years.

Oakley seems too far away. The weeks of silence have been pressing on her lightly, and now they settle in, clamping down on her. She wonders if she should even try to see him, if he even wants to see her. She decides to get out of the apartment, to go for one last walk in the Berkeley Rose Garden, up and down the overgrown amphitheater steps, the bare, untrimmed rose bushes waiting for the rush of spring.

She changes out of her graduation clothes and into soft jeans and a grey t-shirt. Out on the lawn of the complex, she sees Claressa and considers changing direction to avoid talking with her. She wants to be alone with her thoughts.

“Lou!” calls Claressa, and she knows it is too late to escape.

“Hey, Claressa.”

“Congratulations on your graduation!” smiles Claressa, pushing a chunk of cherry red hair behind her ear.

“Thanks,” says Lou, smiling.

“What’s next?”

“Moving to L.A.,” says Lou. “Got a job down there in the Spring.”

“Exciting! Great. That’s great to hear. We’ll miss you around here.”

Lou laughs. “I don’t think anyone will notice. I’m hardly ever here,” she says. “I feel like I live at the library. Or, at least I used to.”

“That’s right, girl!”

“I am  _done_  with all that for a while.” She laughs, puts her hands in her pockets.

“Oh!” Claressa’s eyes widen. “Wait right here, Lou. I got something of yours by mistake, hold on.”

Claressa runs quickly to her apartment door, lets herself in, and comes back out, waving something in the air.

A pile of catalogs. “Thanks,” she says absently, then nods goodbye and walks down the hill, thumbing through the stack. Something pops out.

 _A thin manila envelope_.

On the crumbling steps of the amphitheater, Lou looks around and sees that she is finally alone. There is a haze of woodsmoke in the air, and a breeze moves through the park. She sits down, a patch of scrubby grass beneath her. She tears open the end of the envelope. One picture falls out, and a long, white, stiff envelope. The photograph actually has Oakley in it, smiling, standing in front of a medieval castle in a knobby brown sweater. His hands are in his pockets. His curly hair, grown long, is messy, stray curls standing on end as he looks intently into the camera.

She flips the photograph over, reads the words on the back:  _My Girl, Zur Weihnachtszeit ist Deutschland entzückend_.

It’s just like Oakley, to tease her that way. He laughs at her lack of knowledge of European languages. “You’re so  _American_ ,” he says. “Who in the world knows only English?”

Her heart quickens as she opens the white envelope. From it slides a small stack of stiff cardstock rectangles. She flips them over, her hands shaking.

Lufthansa tickets from San Francisco to Chicago to New York, to Amsterdam, to Berlin. Her eyes scroll madly to the date. It is Saturday now; the flights depart first thing Monday morning.

She pulls out her phone, flips quickly through browsers and search menus, typing on the tiny screen, barely visible in the glare of the sunny day. Finally she pieces together what it means. She holds up the photograph again, and Oakley’s face beams out at her, his smile contagious, teasing her with his gentle invitation. She feels the tension of waiting and wondering turn to liquid and flow out of her, a peal of golden laughter. She claps her hands together.

 _Germany is lovely at Christmastime_.

She leaps to her feet, and when she looks up at the terraced steps and the halcyon sky overhead, she sees it all in brilliant color.


End file.
